John Classen, a retired letter carrier of 45 years, talks about how he resuscitated a man who tried to drown himself in 1970 at an apartment complex on his carrier route. Classen said he learned how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation only a few weeks earlier during a training video at work.

Construction of the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in downtown Topeka as it appeared on June 1, 1933. The photograph was taken looking northwest through it sbasement. James I. Barnes was the contractor and Frank L. Moon was the construction engineer for the project.

The U.S. Postal Service is expected to reach a final decision on the sale of its office building at 401 S. Kansas Ave. in April. The Postal Service says it will consider letters filed by the appeal deadline before making its announcement.

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In December 1952, George Spotts had just returned to his hometown of Blue Mound after serving two years in Korea as part of a three-year stint in the U.S. Army. There were no jobs in the small Linn County town, so Spotts headed to Topeka.

One of the first things Spotts did was take the civil service examination, administered on the third floor of the city’s main post office at 424 S. Kansas Ave.

“An older man took me under his wing, and he said the post office, fire department and highway patrol all needed workers,” he recalled.

Spotts was hired by the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail for the downtown post office during the 1952 and 1953 Christmas seasons; in-between, he worked at the Post Exchange at Forbes Air Force Base. By January 1954, he was a “sub” for the post office.

“We would come in every morning and sit on the bench, and if we were lucky enough, someone would be on vacation or on sick leave and we would get their route,” he said, adding they might also be asked to return in the afternoon to work a collections route, during which they’d gather mail from curbside boxes.

Several men reported each morning between 6 and 6:30 a.m. and remained sitting on the 8-foot-long bench until about 9 or 9:30 a.m.

“While we were sitting on the bench, we were not on the time clock,” he said. “The next day, we’d do the same thing. We got paid $1.87 an hour, and we tried to get 40 hours a week.”

Spotts said he became a classified U.S. Postal Service worker in April 1954, which meant he would have seniority and a better chance of a steady job with the post office. Before his retirement in July 1983, he delivered mail on the Westboro, Seabrook, Hicrest and First National Bank/Town Site Plaza routes.

Landmark closing

Spotts is among the ranks of letter carriers and other Postal Service employees who have worked at the downtown Topeka post office since it began serving customers in 1932.

The Postal Service in January sent Topeka city officials a letter indicating it planned to close and sell the post office and nearby parking lot at 401 S. Kansas Ave. USPS officials said the office would be relocated to an area with the same ZIP code and wouldn’t result in layoffs.

The Postal Service is closing or merging post offices throughout the nation, citing a loss of $15.9 billion in fiscal year 2012 and $5 billion last fiscal year. First-class mail volume is down 33 percent since 2006.

After the intent to close the downtown post office was revealed, a handful of people sent letters to the Postal Service appealing the Postal Service decision or requesting it to take into consideration the building’s historical value when making its decision.

Although he didn’t write an appeal, Mayor Larry Wolgast sent a letter asking the agency to consider the building’s historical and architectural value as it makes plans to sell the limestone building, which once housed the federal courthouse. In May 1977, the federal court moved into the new Frank Carlson Federal Building at 444 S.E. Quincy.

The building, constructed in the Neo-Classical Revival style, has been a major part of the city’s history:

■ A three-judge federal panel in 1951 heard testimony at the courthouse as part of proceedings that led to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ended racial segregation in schools.

■ Robert Stroud, known as the Birdman of Alcatraz and a former inmate of the Leavenworth penitentiary, made an appearance in the courtroom.

■ A gun battle between law enforcement officers and bank bandits in the courthouse on April 16, 1937, ended the life of 27-year-old FBI agent Wimberly Baker.

USPS is expected to make a decision about the post office in the next few weeks.

Saving a life

Not all history happened inside the building housing the post office. Letter carrier John Classen made it into the headlines on Aug. 6, 1970, when he helped save a man’s life while delivering mail to residents at Gatehouse Apartments.

“The kids were playing in the swimming pool and came up and told the apartment manager they thought someone was having trouble,” Classen, who started working for the post office in 1959, said. “The apartment manager pulled a guy out of the pool and he was having breathing problems.”

Classen was making his daily mail deliveries when he heard someone yelling for help. He ran to the swimming pool, and after seeing the rescued man wasn’t breathing began administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Classen said he had observed how to do the procedure less than six weeks earlier while watching a safety film shown to postal workers. The man he helped save was Sgt. Julius Jackson, a Vietnam War veteran and security policeman at Forbes Air Force Base.

Classen, who retired as a letter carrier in 2004, also navigated through rubble left behind after a deadly tornado hit Topeka in 1966. He said he had to examine heavily damaged houses to find their house numbers so he could leave a message that the resident had mail waiting for them at the post office.